New Beginnings

by Victoria Schwab

  The moment she thought it, a ladder appeared, simple and wooden and running all the way from the grass to the apartment roof eight floors up.

  Strange powers, thought Aria as she brought her hand to a lower rung and began to climb. Up four stories she went — she wasn’t afraid of heights — until she reached Gabby’s window.

  Gabby was nowhere to be seen, but Aria could hear humming and the opening and closing of drawers in the kitchen.

  She took one hand off the ladder and tried to open the window. It wouldn’t budge. Aria made a small, indignant sound. A ladder! A ladder, out of nothing, and she still couldn’t manage to open something closed! It had to be a rule.

  Aria mentally added cannot trespass to the short list of things she knew she couldn’t do, right under cannot heal the sick and cannot fly (I think). And then she sighed, wrapped her arms around the ladder, and tried to decide what she could do. She couldn’t — well, she shouldn’t — just stand there outside the window all night. It was uncomfortable, and probably a little creepy, even if she was invisible.

  She either needed to climb down, or climb up.

  The setting sun was streaking colors across the sky, and Aria wanted to be closer to it, so she chose up. The ladder ended just at the lip of the roof, and Aria swung her leg over. Then she stood on top of the apartment building, feeling as if she were on top of the world.

  She finally allowed herself to become visible again. She looked down at her hands and let out a relieved sigh, surprised at how much effort it had taken to be invisible. Every moment she couldn’t see herself she felt the need to remind herself she was still there, still real. She spent a few moments making sure every bit of her was back, from legs and arms to laces — still pink — and her bracelet.

  In the fading light, she examined the blue circling her wrist and noticed something she hadn’t before. There were small loops woven through the material, rings where charms could be added. Three of them. Her heart jumped. Was that how many people she needed to help? Was that how she would earn her wings?

  Aria’s spirits lifted at the thought. Three people. True, she hadn’t even succeeded in helping one person yet, but she would. She would help Gabby get rid of her smoke, and she’d be a full step closer to a pair of wings.

  She turned her attention back to the sky. It was mesmerizing, the way it changed. She watched the oranges slide into pinks and then deeper purples, shifting and then fading into darkness. The sky made her think of Gabby. Gabby, who was fading, too, becoming invisible even though she didn’t want to be.

  Marco’s sickness was loud and bright and big enough to make everything else feel small. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. But it was time for Gabby to find her light. Find her voice.

  Aria smiled. She couldn’t wait for tomorrow.

  Because tomorrow, Gabby would go to school.

  And Aria would be with her.

  “Hello?” Gabby called out, even though she knew the apartment was empty. Her abuela — her mother’s mother — always said that when you came home, you had to let any ghosts know you were there. Gabby’s grandmother always stomped her feet on the mat and clapped her weathered hands and made a racket every time she entered an empty room.

  Gabby didn’t believe in ghosts, and even if she did, she thought a hello was probably enough. Still, as she made her way through the apartment, she went back to humming. She sang to herself as she kicked off her shoes and dropped the bag of school supplies on the table.

  Ghosts can’t just come in, her abuela had added. Not unless you let them.

  Are ghosts the only things? Gabby had asked.

  Her abuela had tutted. No, mija. Ghosts and monsters and angels and all those magic things, they all need your permission to come in.

  Why?

  Why? Why? Because it’s a rule. They have different rules than we do. Rules about right and wrong, and what is theirs and what is ours.

  Her abuela was a strange, superstitious woman.

  Don’t ask why, just know it, her abuela had said. And keep the door closed.

  Gabby wished her abuela had come with them — she still lived in their old town. She called all the time, but it wasn’t the same. Gabby’s mom said she was too old to travel, but Gabby knew the truth: she had a fear of hospitals — too many go in, too few go out — and would rather light candles for Marco from home.

  Gabby found a frozen lasagna in the freezer and popped it in the microwave. She rapped her fingers on the counter, humming under the sound of the food cooking as her gaze wandered over the empty apartment. Her mom’s room sat dark, practically unused, and down the hall Gabby’s room was almost as lifeless. No dent in the wall from where Marco had thrown the ball and she’d failed to catch it. No scratch on the floor from where she’d tried to roller-skate indoors. No notches on the doorframe from where they’d measured her height. Every time she flipped on the lights, she still found herself looking for those notches, as if one of the marks might have come with them from their old house. But none of them had.

  Marco had a room, too, but he’d only slept in his bed one night between moving here and getting checked in at the hospital. Still, his was the only room that looked the least bit warm and welcoming, as if that would will him to get better faster, to come home. Not that this place felt like a home.

  The microwave dinged. Because she couldn’t eat and hum at the same time, Gabby turned on the TV, and a game show filled the apartment with hollow, high-pitched sound while she picked at the cheese on her lasagna.

  “Marco?” Gabby called out, breathless from running.

  He’d been right ahead of her. He’d been winning. And now he was gone.

  She called his name again, hearing only the echo Marco, Marco, Marco, through the trees. Nothing else, not even his playful answer, Polo, Polo, Polo.

  Gabby kept climbing up the hill, but when she got to the clearing at the top, it was empty. And quiet.

  Fear began to claw at Gabby.

  “Marco!” she cried out, but this time there wasn’t even an echo. The world ate up the words and left only silence, thick and smothering, interrupted at last not by her brother’s voice, but by a harsh, metallic alarm.

  Gabby woke up, her throat and eyes burning as the alarm on her bedside table blared.

  “Mom?” she called out, her voice shaky from the nightmare. No answer. She climbed out of bed and padded through the apartment, but there was no sign of her mother. She felt a wave of sadness, followed by panic.

  Maybe there was a good reason her mom had stayed over at the hospital. Maybe something was wrong with Marco. Gabby went back to her room and grabbed her phone from her dresser. She hated that calling had become the easiest way to get her mom’s attention.

  It only rang twice before a voice said, “Hello?”

  “Hey, Mom, it’s me. I just wanted to make sure everything’s okay.”

  “Yes, of course, why wouldn’t …” She could hear her mom fumbling with the phone and pictured her looking at her watch. “Oh, mija, I’m so sorry. It got late and I was tired and I just closed my eyes for a moment. I was going to wake up early and come home in time.”

  “It’s okay,” said Gabby. “I just got worried.”

  “Do you want me to come home?” asked her mom.

  Yes, thought Gabby. “No,” she said. “It’s fine.”

  She wanted her mom to insist, to say she was leaving, was already in the lot, was on her way. Instead, her mom said, “Okay.”

  Gabby’s heart sank. Her mom was tuned to the slightest changes in Marco’s mood, but Gabby felt like she had to shout if she wanted to be noticed. And she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Couldn’t find the voice.

  “Have a great first day,” added her mom.

  “I’ll try.” A few tears escaped down Gabby’s face before she could wipe them away. She hung up and shook her head, chiding herself.

  This was seventh grade, not elementary school. She wasn’t a little kid anymore. She didn’
t need her mom to see her off to class. This was her chance, her fresh start, and she couldn’t let a silly little thing like the lack of a kiss on the cheek ruin it.

  She focused on getting ready. Gabby stood at the mouth of her closet, surveying her wardrobe. Everything looked too bright, or too dull, or too big, or too tight. She hadn’t gone shopping since before the move, had spent the summer in jeans and T-shirts (and hoodies, because the hospital was always cold). Now she was terrified that there would be some major trend at Grand Heights Middle that she didn’t know about. Back home, Alice had always known the latest styles, while Beth chose not to care about clothes. Gabby fell somewhere in the middle. Now, she wondered: Do the twelve-year-old girls here wear skirts? Headbands? Leggings?

  She thought of Aria’s blue leggings from yesterday and dug around in a drawer until she found a pair of green ones so bright they must have been part of a Halloween costume. Reluctantly she tried them on under a frilly skirt. She chanced a look in the mirror and grimaced.

  She looked ridiculous. Scrambling out of the outfit before anyone else could ever see, Gabby stared down at the clothes littering her bedroom floor. Again she wished her mom could be there to advise, and again she smothered the feeling. Seventh graders, she told herself, did not need parents to offer fashion input.

  She finally settled on a version of her summer uniform: a pair of dark jeans, a red T-shirt with a scooped neck, and ballet flats. Not the most exciting outfit — she wasn’t as fashion-forward as Alice, as carefree as Beth, or as bold as Aria — but it would do.

  Gabby grabbed her backpack, walked out of her room, and took some money from an envelope tacked to the fridge labeled FOOD. She stomped her feet once by the front door to let any ghosts know she was leaving and marched downstairs. There was an orange cat on the front stoop, and she was just leaning down to pet it when she saw the school bus rounding the corner. She ran and reached the stop just as the bus did. Gabby took one last, deep breath, and climbed on board.

  It was the first day, and the bus was only half full, but everyone on it seemed to know one another already. The kids huddled in groups, chatting about their summers. Gabby slid into a seat alone and looked out the window at her apartment building as the bus pulled away. She saw the orange cat stretching on the steps, but as her gaze drifted up the seven — no, eight — floors, she could have sworn she saw someone standing on the roof. A girl. She squinted, but a second later, when the bus rounded the corner, the figure was gone.

  Aria sat up abruptly.

  She’d been lying on the rooftop, sprawled out on a few blankets. She’d summoned them, along with a pillow, the night before, the same way she had the ladder (it seemed summoning useful objects was firmly on the list of things she could do).

  She hadn’t fallen asleep exactly, but her mind had wandered off, and by the time she pulled it back the sun was shining and the air was cool and a small gray bird was pecking at her shadow. She shooed the bird away and got to her feet. It took a moment for her thoughts to collect, and when they did, they shaped into a single word.

  Gabby.

  And then another.

  School.

  Aria burst into motion, the pillow and blankets turning to fog and then to nothing around her feet as she hurried to the edge of the roof. She got there just in time to see Gabby stepping onto the school bus. Oh no.

  With a last glance around the roof, Aria swung her leg over the edge of the ladder. But she’d made it down only a few rungs when someone cried out, and she froze.

  A man on the sidewalk below was shouting up at her and waving his hands. At this height, she couldn’t hear what he was saying, but one thing was clear. A twelve-year-old girl clinging to a ladder eight stories up was not normal.

  The bus had turned the corner, taking Gabby with it, and the man was shouting frantically, and the front door of the building opened as a handful of other tenants came out to see what was going on, and in that moment Aria knew one thing: she needed to disappear.

  It happened instantly, just as it had the day before, but then she’d been standing firmly on the ground and this time she’d been clinging to the ladder, and the sight of her fingers vanishing from the rungs made her lose her balance.

  And in a moment of panic, Aria let go.

  And she began to fall.

  The man on the sidewalk stopped shouting, not because the other tenants were trying to calm him, but because he couldn’t see Aria plummeting down. He couldn’t see her at all.

  But Aria was still there, and she was still falling very, very quickly toward the ground below.

  Three seconds before she hit the ground, she realized very concretely that no, she could not fly.

  Two seconds before she hit the ground, her shadow appeared beneath her, waiting.

  And the second before she hit the ground, her shadow filled with brilliant, blinding light. And when Aria hit the ground, and the shadow, she fell straight through into the white.

  The shadow took shape on the sidewalk across the street from the school.

  If the hundreds of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders had been looking back at their parents’ cars and the school buses instead of straight ahead at the front doors, they might have seen it. As it was, nobody saw the shadow that sprung up out of nothing. Nobody saw it take the shape of a twelve-year-old girl, and nobody saw it glow with light, and nobody saw the coppery-haired girl stumble up and out of it and onto the sidewalk.

  Nobody, except a sixth-grade boy. He was standing on the sidewalk and had watched the whole thing with wide eyes. He watched the girl brush herself off, sigh with relief, and say, “Good shadow.”

  The shadow seemed pleased with itself, its light flickering a little before going out.

  Well, thought Aria as the edges of the shadow reattached themselves to her heels. That settles that.

  “Settles what?” asked the boy, and Aria looked up, realizing that she was visible again, and had spoken out loud.

  “Can’t fly,” she said.

  The boy’s eyes widened a little more. “What are you?”

  Aria sighed. Not who, which would have been easy to answer, but what. No one had asked Aria that, and she chewed her lip, and opened her mouth, and was about to answer when a bell rang in the distance. She cracked a grin.

  “Late for class,” she said, then waved good-bye and jogged toward the school.

  On her way, she noticed that one of her laces — still pink — had come undone. She knelt to retie it, and while she was there, she decided to make them yellow instead. As her fingers redid the knot and then the bow, color slid out from her touch and along the shoestrings. She retied the laces on the other shoe, to make them even, and by the time she finished, both shoes were sporting laces the color of lemons. Aria smiled, and straightened, and looked up at the school.

  GRAND HEIGHTS MIDDLE SCHOOL, read the marquee over the doors. This must be Gabby’s school. Aria followed the wave of students inside, scanning the hall for signs of the other girl. She didn’t see her. To be fair, it was a very large school, and there were a lot of kids. The hospital had been large, too, but Gabby stood out there, and here she’d blend right in.

  Except, of course, for her blue smoke.

  Not that Aria would be able to see it, with so many people — some of them tall! — in her way.

  “There you are!”

  Aria spun, but the girl who’d shouted those words wasn’t talking to her.

  “Move it, loser.”

  Aria frowned and turned, but the boy who’d said it was nudging someone else.

  “I’ve missed you.”

  “Clear a path!”

  “No food in the hall.”

  “Ugh.”

  Laughter. Slamming lockers. Scuffing shoes. A group of boys jostled for a soccer ball. A huddle of girls flipped through the pages of a magazine. The whole school hummed with a kind of terrifying energy, and Aria hoped that wherever Gabby was, she was okay. Grand Heights Middle School wasn’t just large, it was l
oud. A quiet person could drown in this much noise.

  But Aria wouldn’t let her.

  Another bell rang, high and sharp over the sounds of the students, and the hall began to empty. Aria shifted her weight from foot to foot. Everyone was going to class, and she knew she couldn’t just keep wandering around, looking for Gabby. Somebody — a teacher — would catch her and ask questions, as long as she was visible.

  Still shaken from her last vanishing act and the fall, Aria took a deep breath and braced herself for the strange, vaguely uncomfortable feeling of disappearing.

  But nothing happened.

  Aria stared down at her hand and the blue charm bracelet around her wrist, both still visible. She thought again that she should probably be invisible. Again, she wasn’t.

  Aria didn’t know if she was drained from the morning’s mishap, or if the magic didn’t come because she didn’t need it, or if deep down, she didn’t want to be invisible. Whatever the reason, it looked like Aria was going to be playing the role of student, and that meant she’d need to blend in. She looked around at the other kids in the hall. There didn’t seem to be a uniform, or any standard outfit — most of them wore jeans and T-shirts — so she could keep her blue leggings and her white pocket skirt, but she needed a backpack.

  A moment later she felt the strap in her hand and Aria was pleased to discover how bright the backpack was, a kind of iridescent fabric that changed colors in the light.

  She caught her reflection in a glass case and marveled. She looked like a student!

  The hall was almost empty, and Aria was about to pick a class at random when she saw something vanishing into a room ahead. Blue smoke.

  Aria smiled and ran to catch up.

  “Hey, how was break?”

  “Dang, you got tall.”